Other Stuff:

When I was a kid, “Indian giver” was a spiteful thing that you called someone who gave you something, then, for whatever reason wanted it back, asked for it back, or worse, took it back. The phrase has pretty much faded from common usage, in large part because of it’s clearly a negative racial stereotype.

Recently, I was reading a book by Jim McNeely III, The Romance of Grace, and in his chapter on ‘Gift Cultural’ (chap. 8) he quotes another book, The Gift by Lewis Hyde. Being me, I found that book and read a little on the origin of the phrase “Indian giver”.

I had assumed, like many stereotypes, the phrase had it’s roots in some singular observations or observations of a small minority of the group being stereotyped. That stereotype was told over and over again to degrade and dehumanize them until it became accepted as descriptive of the group as a whole.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that “Indian giving” wasn’t a false stereotype, but a deeply ingrained cultural value among the some the indigenous peoples encountered by the Puritans.

During every election cycle here in the U.S. there are always evangelists and Christian leaders pounding the pulpit and declaring the need for America to return to obedience to God and His Righteous Law.

Great! But what would that look like? Well, dinner would have to change…

No more bacon – or ham sandwiches, Easter ham, stuffed pork chops.

No more lobsta’ as we Mainers call it – or jumbo shrimp, Alaskan King Crab, Cajun craw-dad boils, or New England clam bakes.

No more “Surf -n- Turf” because meat and fish can’t be served together on the same plate. Also, no Philly steak sandwiches because the same goes for cooking meat and dairy together.

There are also Laws against eating camels, rock badger, hares, swarming bugs, and vultures, but I’m not as concerned on that account.

While Hagee apologists are now saying that he only predicted “something” would happen “around” the time of the tetrad, Mark Biltz, who provided most of the source research for Hagee’s slick DVD and posters, made clear predictions that the 7 year tribulation began in 2008 and would end with Jesus second coming this fall, following the last blood moon.

While I don’t want to spend time pointing out false prophets, I have been wondering about the need in the Church to guess the date and time of Jesus’ return. Hagee and Biltz aren’t the first, and probably won’t be the last to try to win the rapture lottery. I did some shameless cut and paste from Wikipedia. Below are just a few of the names who have tried their hand at guessing the day and the hour that God clearly says no man (or angel!) will know. These are just some of the names I recognized skimming the list: Continue Reading →

Beside getting OAuth 2 setup for Google Apps, the hardest part of this was to come up with a simple way to create and send MailChimp campaigns with a similar layout and look, but with some custom content. My choices seem to be to between:

1. Create the full HTML5 content from scratch, taking care to include the required Mailchimp tags like *|UNSUB|* or *|HTML:REWARDS|*

2. Use the mailchimp.campaigns and mailchimp.campaigns.template_content from the Mailchimp API to take the template from the campaign and inject content in just the places I want it.

So that I could allow users the chance to continue using the Mailchimp template editor and then just provide search-n-replace snippets, I opted for #2. If I wanted to have radically different content style each time or I had content providers that where more savvy with HTML5 skills and tools, #1 would work, but that is not my world.

First, I created a place-holder campaign there I would layout the style and the bits to be replaced with content. All future campaigns would be replicated from this one then altered using the campaign settings and altering the campaign content itself. Settings are easy with code like:

mailchimp.campaigns.update(campaign_id,'options',{ 'Some Title' })

The content is a bit messier. I get the template as a big data structure with mailchimp.campaigns.template_content(campaign_id), search through it for my search-n-replace “tags” then use the campaigns.update method to inject it back into the content.

Last time, I described what I thought needed to happen in order to send out a verse of the day message via SMS and email. This makes use of Google Drive, ESV Bible, Twillio, and MailChimp APIs and interfaces.

The first thing is to create a place to store our information. This includes people’s signup information such as names, emails, and SMS numbers. Also we need a place to store the content that will be sent out.

Since most of our staff uses Google Docs, a Google spreadsheet seemed like the best choice to support the hand entry process. Some of the signup data was expected to come through a MailChimp form so keeping the spreadsheet and mailchimp in sync might become an issue, but for this year, we can sync the signups by hand. MailChimp has an easy import/export from Google Docs process which makes it easier. Continue Reading →

I have the opportunity to share something from God’s Word and His heart on the first Sunday of every month. It may not seem like the best situation for doing a series, but I’ve really felt the urge to cover an entire book of the Bible, cover-to-cover. So, for the next 10 months, I’m walking through Paul’s letter the Philippian believers with our congregation. Well, it’s really a 12 month commitment, but I just finished my second month covering Philippians 1:12-18.

The more I study and observe the state of Christianity and discipleship around me, the more I am convinced that most of what is holding the Church back from it’s mission is the Church – or rather the odd ideas and practices that have leached into our collective conscience disguised as biblical teaching, preaching, and doctrine.

One such idea I have started calling the “Fallacy of the Fragile Gospel”. It’s the idea that the Gospel is so precarious that unless we are completely sinless, have perfect knowledge of scripture and doctrine, and are fully equipped for the works of the ministry, we risk damaging the Gospel or making it ineffectual.

While righteousness and holiness are important, a sound, working knowledge of scripture and Biblical doctrine are powerful, and discipleship and preparation for ministry is key, holding the Gospel as if it is a fragile egg results in some pretty unbiblical behaviours:

Failure to Launch – I love this video by the folks at RightNow.org – Fire Station Failure – that pretty much says it.

New == Bad – Face it, the Church hates to be thought of as “experimental”. “We have never done it that way before” can be the death of Holy Spirit inspired, creative, and innovative methods of fulfilling our mission. What we forget, is that almost every method of ministry while possibly being Biblically informed, started some place and some time after the early church. It is hard to find soccer camps, mommy blogs, pay-what-it’s-worth coffee houses, or digging wells in Niger as biblically defined methods of spreading the Gospel of the Kingdom.

Borrowed Faith – I have to admit that I am often suspicious of people who constantly quote their favourite radio preacher, Christian writer or blogger, or copy step-by-step the methods or techniques of some historical giant of the faith. While I am all for learning from the examples of those who came before us, dogmatically trying to preach the Gospel like Charles H. Spurgeon, or pray for provision for your ministry with the words of George Mueller is more likely a sign that you are worried God can’t use you as you are.

Calling in the Professionals – Nothing bugs me quite like hearing, “My new friend seems open to the Gospel so I invited then to church this Sunday. Is there going to be a salvation message?” “No, Sister Sally, this week we will be sharing muffin recipes – maybe you should share what Jesus did for you during your 20 years as a disciple with them and see what happens.” (This is what I would like to say, anyway.)

In my past life as a geek and business leader, I learned a number of things that seem to help combat this idea of a fragile Gospel:

Release Early, Release Often – used in open source software development, the idea is that it is better get your application out there in front of real users as soon as possible to find out what is broken, what could be better and what isn’t needed. Our mission and ministry should be like that. Jesus sent the disciples out long before they where “perfected”.

Authenticity and Honesty Trumps Polish and Hype – Being straight with customers about the quarks and weaknesses of a product or service has won me way more loyalty and trust than trying to come off as Superman selling a magic cure-all. Unless we fully understand the nature of God, Jesus, the Scriptures and God’s plan and purpose for mankind and each individual, chance are we don’t have all the answers. We work out our salvation and renew our minds daily.

Failure and Defeat are NOT the Same Thing – I used to teach Test First Development – without getting into details, the idea was to create tests that would fail until the code worked as expected. Often we would right code, run the tests, and watch as each iteration came closer and closer to %100 green or all test passed. At no time did the failures indicate that we should quit or admit defeat. All too often in Church I have had a single failure brought up as a reason not to continue or not to try again. I learned to think of failures as the guideposts for moving forward and defeat as the sign that there is no forward path to be found.

One of the most humbling things that ever happened to me as a new Christian was coming home one day to find several full bags of groceries on my front porch. Bread, milk, eggs, peanut butter and much more. I was newly married, both of us working part-time. Me as a farmhand, her as a waitress. Continue Reading →

Hi-ho, Silver, Away!

“When the West was young and danger lay at the end of every trail, the Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto, brought law and order to the length and breadth of the early Western states.”

For many years, I have accepting the idea that it is at least possible to be a “Lone Ranger Christian”, the Holy Spirit by your side, reading the Word, getting teachings on the Internet, TV, and Christian radio, hanging out with Christian friends as fellowship, no need to be a member of a local church. It seems so reasonable – We are taught in Scripture that our salvation is a personal one, between us and Jesus. We yearn for a personal relationship with the Father, made possible though the Son by the Holy Spirit. Jesus is all we need, right? Continue Reading →

Have someone to fetch beverages from the fridge.
The reality is that no one under the age of five can carry a can of carbonated refreshment without shaking it. Getting from the living room to the kitchen and back almost certainly involves running twice around “the loop”, hopscotch across the kitchen tiles, lifting the can over the head (and dropping it) like a muscle man, and finally, leaping, in a single bound, over the arm of the couch to triumphantly deliver the beverage. Continue Reading →